Encryption uses cryptography to securely transmit sensitive information over the internet. There are two main types: symmetric key encryption where both parties share a secret key, and public key encryption where each party has a public and private key to encrypt and decrypt messages. Public key encryption is more secure as it allows anyone to encrypt a message but only the intended recipient can decrypt it with their private key, making eavesdropping difficult.

1. How Encryption Works Masato Johoji Kengo Sato

2. Introduction to How Encryption Works The incredible growth of the Internet has excited businesses and consumers alike with its promise of changing the way we live and work. It's extremely easy to buy and sell goods all over the world while sitting in front of a laptop. But security is a major concern on the Internet, especially when you're using it to send sensitive information between parties.

3. Security Encryption Systems Computer encryption is based on the science of cryptography, which has been used as long as humans have wanted to keep information secret. Before the digital age, the biggest users of cryptography were governments, particularly for military purposes.

4. Symmetric Key In symmetric-key encryption, each computer has a secret code that it can use to encrypt a packet of information before it is sent over the network to another computer. Symmetric-key requires that you know which computers will be talking to each other so you can install the key on each one. Symmetric-key encryption is essentially the same as a secret code that each of the two computers must know in order to decode the information. The code provides the key to decoding the message.

5. Public Key Encryption To decode an encrypted message, a computer must use the public key, provided by the originating computer, and its own private key. Although a message sent from one computer to another won't be secure since the public key used for encryption is published and available to anyone, anyone who picks it up can't read it without the private key. This makes the system extremely secure, because there is essentially an infinite number of prime numbers available, meaning there are nearly infinite possibilities for keys.

6. Hashing Algorithm The important thing about a hash value is that it is nearly impossible to derive the original input number without knowing the data used to create the hash value. Public-key encryption is actually much more complex than this example, but that's the basic idea.